Free Trees for Tacoma’s Hilltop Neighborhood.
What it is:
Green Blocks is Tacoma Tree Foundation’s neighborhood-specific program that provides community education and free trees! Our goal is to empower residents by reducing barriers, providing tree care education, and assisting in tree selection, delivery, planting, and maintenance.
By planting around 600 street trees in Hilltop from 2025–2027, TTF hopes to improve community resilience, human health, air and water quality, and individual quality of life.
Where is it and who is it for?
The Green Blocks: Hilltop project area boundaries are 6th Avenue to the North, Tacoma Avenue South to the East, the S 27th St bluff to the South and State Street to the West.
Residents living within the project area can sign up to receive free trees for their right-of-way, as well as resources on tree planting and care through our Tree Stewards training.
We prioritize SINGLE FAMILY homes, but apartments, townhouses, duplexes, churches, and businesses may request trees, and we’ll work with each property owner and their unique property needs.
RENTERS, please forward these resources to your landlord/property owner and invite them to fill out the tree request information.
If you’re unsure if your property falls into the project area, please submit your request anyway and program staff will let you know.
How it Works: Tree Matching, Delivery, Planting, and Tree Care
The Tacoma Tree Foundation team leads nearly every step of the Green Blocks process—making it easy for you to get trees planted in your neighborhood. After you submit your tree request, here’s what we do and what we ask of participants:
Tree requests, including tree delivery and optional planting assistance. We’ll open our tree request closer to the winter, with a planting event in early Spring. Before completing the form, review our planting and tree spacing guides and confirm that the tree(s) can fit in your right-of-way. Tree requests are limited to preferences for evergreen trees and deciduous trees. Share your goal for tree planting to help guide us in tree selection.
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Verify your address is within the project area.
Visit your site to assess planting conditions.
Mark your planting area in white paint and submit utility locate requests to identify underground utilities present.
Review locate results and mark planting locations with wooden stake(s).
Match suitable tree species to your site based on tree characteristics, available space, utilities, and your stated goals.
Email you with your tree offer.
Deliver confirmed trees to your home the week prior to planting.
Plant trees with volunteer teams during our community event unless you prefer to plant on your own.
Support watering by monitoring newly planted trees each summer and provide once per month watering to trees that need it.
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Confirm your tree selections (preferably by email).
Commit to watering your new trees weekly for the first three years (April–September) to ensure they thrive.
Provide ongoing tree care throughout the tree’s lifetime. We will continue to offer educational workshops and webinars to help you along the way!
Optional: Join us on planting day and help get trees in the ground!
Green Blocks: Hilltop is a Three-Year Program.
Read about the impacts from the last two years and how to participate in our last year!
Why Hilltop?
Hilltop was selected for this program because it is one of the neighborhoods where more trees have the most social and environmental benefits. The Hilltop neighborhood has a rich history. However, in the mid-twentieth century, the Hilltop was redlined, making it a primary housing option for people of color and people in poverty. The underinvestment that followed still impacts people today. Now, Hilltop has around half the tree canopy coverage as the Tacoma average, making residents more vulnerable to summer heat and respiratory illnesses. This unfairness is what makes the tree coverage in Hilltop (as well as in Eastside and South Tacoma) an urgent environmental justice issue.
For more on these issues and our understanding of them, check out The Intersection of Trees, Equity, and Human Health in Tacoma (from the City of Tacoma Urban Forestry program).
For information on the subject of gentrification in Hilltop, check out this podcast from Crossing Division.
Residential Security map, Tacoma, 1929
National Archives (NAID: 720357)
Monthly Watering May-September!
That’s right! This project funds monthly watering services after planting!
We know that watering trees all summer is expensive and labor intensive and we’re thrilled to be able to remove that barrier to providing this integral resource for a thriving tree.
We’ll install your tree watering bag in the early spring and visit your street trees every month, provide water and check on its health.
Get Involved
In this 5 hour training, participants will learn information on tree selection, planting, and caring for young trees. Participants will also learn how to communicate about trees with their neighbors and how to engage in their Tacoma neighborhood in tree planting and utilize or promote Green Blocks: Hilltop event. Our next Tree Stewards training is coming January 2027.
Green Blocks: Hilltop provides planting assistance to participants who need it. Volunteers make providing this integral service possible. Our planting events are family and ability-friendly and we are available to accommodate multilingual speakers upon request.
We mapped our project area to find the best places for trees!
The Plantable Space Map for Green Blocks: Hilltop serves as a community tool for residents to explore planting opportunities in their neighborhood. Information such as right-of-way size, the presence of power lines, existing trees, and infrastructure was recorded to determine how much plantable space was available on each block. Right-of-way were defined as having optimal, moderate, limited, or unavailable planting opportunity.
With the assistance of the Northwest Youth Corps, we were able to collect a total of 808 records on right-of-ways in Hilltop. With this information, we can see which blocks have more planting obstacles and which are more open to potential planting. This can help us better understand why certain blocks are easier or more difficult to navigate during the planting process.
Find your street and see how much plantable space your block has!
Frequently Asked Questions:
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811 is the national (and free) call-before-you-dig phone number. Anyone who plans to dig should call 811 or go to their state 811 center’s website before digging to request that the approximate location of buried utilities be marked with paint or flags so that you don’t unintentionally dig into an underground utility line.
811 protects you and your community! Hitting a buried line while digging can disrupt utility service, cost money to repair, or cause serious injury or death.
For this program residents will need to submit utility locates for their entire right-of-way between Feb 5-7th. Program staff will then visit each property and assess the underground utility markings and all other infrastructure to decide which type of tree and how many can be safely planted.
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We provide a variety of trees that can meet the diversity of planting sites as well as tolerate the harsh conditions of urban streets. We offer both deciduous and evergreen trees, taking into consideration species that provide color, shade, and noise reduction. We do not guarantee any specific trees. All trees are chosen to comply with right tree, right place standards and will grow to varying heights and widths. If you have a strong preference on tree species and size, we invite you to utilize the Tree Coupon Program or the Pierce Conservation District Urban Tree Sale instead.
The Green Blocks program is intended to serve community members who face social, financial, or physical barriers to accessing trees. If you do not face these barriers and are eager to support the greening of Hilltop District, we encourage you to volunteer, help to get the word out, and assist in planting trees for your neighbors.
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TTF staff will visit each property to assess how many trees appropriately fit within the right-of-way considering underground and above ground utilities as well as sidewalks, powerlines and other infrastructure. Program staff will choose the right tree for the right place using these standard planting guidelines. Your tree offering will factor in these planting site details.
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You won’t be able to receive trees within this program but can take advantage of many other tree share programs. Check out our Community Greening PDF to find out which tree programs you qualify for. We also always welcome tree enthusiasts to volunteer with us, become a tree steward or attend our many tree advocacy events!
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Our grant funding for Green Blocks: Hilltop allows us to provide tree care resources, watering materials, and support. We will monitor these trees each summer, send watering reminders, and provide once per month watering to trees that need it.
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You can share the website with folks or print this flyer for your community spaces like church, school and work! We’ll be canvassing the central neighborhood surrounding MLK (Sheridan to J st) with doorhangers.
Funding for this project provided by the USDA Forest Service, Urban and Community Forestry Program in partnership with the State of Washington Department of Natural Resources, Urban and Community Forestry Program.
Still have questions about Green Blocks: Hilltop?
Reach out to the Planting Team here!
